Thou Shalt Not Wear Tight Pants

This post first appeared in The Times of Israel.

Don’t get any ideas, Haredi men. (YouTube screenshot)

Hasidic hipsters are going to have to forgo their skinny jeans — or, more likely, their skinny black trousers. So says an experton Jewish law who has lent his authority to a Jerusalem campaign against tight men’s clothing.

Notices posted in the city’s Haredi neighborhoods now include a quotation from Israeli Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, a leading Ashkenazi religious scholar, who warns that men intentionally wearing tight pants will face excommunication.

While women’s clothing has long been a central concern among the religious, the focus on male modesty is only a few months old.

According to Kanievsky and his supporters, wearing tight clothing (a “custom of the goyim”) is stringently prohibited by the Torah.